Managing users on Linux systems

Sandra Henry-Stocker |
Sept. 27, 2017

Your Linux users may not be raging bulls, but keeping them happy is always a challenge as it involves managing their accounts, monitoring their access rights, tracking down the solutions to problems they run into, and keeping them informed about important changes on the systems they use.

This command will only show you users who have logged on since the current wtmp file became active. The blank lines indicate that some users have never logged in since that time, but doesn't call them out. A better command would be this one that clear displays the users who have not logged in at all in this time period:

Sometimes this kind of information can alert you to changes in users' roles that suggest they may no longer need the accounts in question.

Communicating with users

Linux systems provide a number of ways to communicate with your users. You can add messages to the /etc/motd file that will be displayed when a user logs into a server using a terminal connection. You can also message users with commands such as write (message to single user) or wall (write to all logled in users.